NEWSQUEST Media Group, which publishes the Worcester News and sister titles including the Malvern Gazette and Evesham Journal, has been named 2016’s Most Innovative Publisher.

The award, in recognition of the group's work on local digital advertising products, was announced at the Drum’s Digital Trading Awards, held in London and attended by the great and the good of the UK’s digital advertising industry.

The award reflects the innovative work achieved through the launch of a series of business specific local display advertising products.

Mark Smith, Newsquest's digital director, said: "“The challenge facing us was to make it easy for our local sales teams to provide our clients with not just standard display advertising but the same level of sophisticated targeting which national brands can access, whilst keeping the product, the sale and the process as simple as possible.

"I’m delighted that our digital display team rose to that challenge and they thoroughly deserve the accolade."

The new suite of products was developed by Newsquest’s central digital display team who created highly targeted advertising packages for specific client categories which were then rolled out across the group. This enabled local sales teams to easily and simply offer highly effective digital display campaigns for smaller clients that dramatically improved the advertising performance.

Newsquest’s digital display director, Simon Sarahs, said: “By putting our clients’ needs front and centre we were able to truly understand their business objectives, and then ensure that their advertising was in front of the right audience, at the right time and in the right environment.”

The new products provided huge improvements to operational efficiencies while increasing average campaign values by 29%, yields by 207%, campaign CTRs by 325% and viewability by 16%.